Rewrite the Rhythm of My Heartbeat
by Pandatubbies
Summary: Four different AUs, four different mourners. Living and dying and the things we remember.
1. JamesLily

_For __dimitrisgirl18__'s Big/Lil' Sis Competition, using the prompts: Pairing: James/Lily, Word: tears, Quote: "It's always easier to say good-bye when you know it's just a prelude to hello." -Maureen Johnson_

_Also for __Fire The Canon__'s May Fanfiction Tournaments Competition, round one. The story must be written in the Marauder's era._

* * *

His eyes are wide with terror.

Hers are closed, unfeeling.

His heart beats ten times faster than usual.

Hers has stopped altogether.

He's crying, the tears streaming down his face silently as he shakes his head, whispering _"No"_ over and over.

She's silent.

Shaking his head, he falls to his knees and touches her face, gently brushing his fingertips across her lips. He doesn't know when it happened. She was still sleeping when he woke, so he had walked down to breakfast with Sirius and the others, joking as always. Lily hadn't come down. After the meal, he had gone into the Heads' Dormitory to find her slumped on the ground, her body pale and lifeless.

He hasn't moved since. For a long while, he simply stares at her, disbelieving. Who could have gotten into the Head's dorm? No one would know the password, he reasons. But no matter how rational he tries to be, he can't help the tears falling from his eyes, and his heart from beating uncontrollably. It hurts. It truly, physically hurts him to see her gone, dead, _empty_ like this. Even after only a month or so of dating, James knows that he was completely and hopelessly in love with her. But now, he knows it was all in vain, because there is no denying the fact that Lily Evans is dead, as dead as the once-golden dandelion wilting in her hair.

"A dandelion?" he had mocked her as she tucked the small flower behind her ear, "Behind the ear of a Lily? The irony is killing me." She had smirked- the smirk he had grown to love- and elbowed him, laughing. Taking James' hand, she pulled him along toward the castle, her lips tickling his ear.

"Come on," she had murmured. "We have to get back inside. It's getting late." Once they reached the dorms, she had kissed him gently before walking toward her room. "Night," she called over her shoulder.

"Bye, Lils."

He winces now to think how casually he said it, as though it were just another goodbye, no more significant than any other. And at the time, it wasn't.

But things don't always turn out the way they should; James understands this now. And goodbyes are always easier when you expect them to be followed by countless more hellos.

Maybe, James realises, we don't always know what we're saying when we say goodbye. Maybe we should treat every goodbye like it's the last. After all, things happen, and sometimes, the end comes quicker than it should.

James sighs, annoyed with himself. He isn't going to become a sappy romantic overnight, just because something bad happened to him; the other Marauders would get sick of that pretty quickly, and truth be told, so would he. Still, he figures it's a good point. We never really know when "the end" is; we usually just deny that life _will_ end. And we waste the moments because of that. He wishes he could say goodbye just one more time, a real _goodbye_ instead of simply a _see you later_. But now he has to say goodbye for real.

It was so much easier when it was simply a prelude to hello.


	2. SeverusLily

For the finals of Fire The Canon's April Fanfiction Tournament Competitions, using the prompt: **Half-Blood Prince.**

Also my first of two drabbles for Round 2 of dimitrisgirl18's Big/Lil' Sister Competition, using the prompts: **Word: friends**, **Phrase: forgive me**, **Color: green.**

Word count: 643

* * *

They hadn't parted on good terms. She hadn't spoken to him since the night of the Mudblood incident, and he had never tried to repair the hole he had torn in their friendship.

_"I thought we were supposed to be friends? Best friends?"_ His own words echoed in his mind as Severus shook his head slightly. He hadn't deserved Lily. Not even as a friend, let alone as more than that. Although he may have thought that they were "best friends," Severus should have realised long ago that Lily was going to discover for herself how terrible he was.

He had just sped that process up a bit. In his heart, in the tiniest, most secluded part of his mind, Severus had always had hope for them. Hope that he would gather the courage to apologise and that Lily would smile and they could go back to how they were before. But it was too late now, he knew that.

_She's dead, _he told himself firmly, and any hope he once had for them was gone. Like that. The casket was open, and his chest ached as he looked inside. No one had closed her eyes, and red lashes still framed the emerald orbs. She should have looked exactly the same as she always did. Yet something about her was different. Those eyes, eyes that had been sparkling green and full of life, the eyes he had fallen in love with when he was just nine years old, were now, there was no other word for it, _dead._ _Empty._ And it made him shiver just to see this woman who had once been so full of life lying dead in her new bed of stone where she would spend all eternity.

The funeral service wasn't due to start for another ten minutes. People were slowly arriving, offering their condolences to James and her close relatives, and Severus took the time to kneel beside the coffin while everyone's attention was off of him. He had heard news of Lily's death from Dumbledore, and he wanted to say goodbye before the actual funeral occurred. He feared he wouldn't be very welcome at the service.

"Please forgive me, Lily," he whispered, tears welling up in his black eyes, "I never meant to insult you. All I ever wanted was for- for you-" He bit back the words _to be happy, _because, if he were being completely honest with himself, that wasn't true. "I just wanted for you to love me as much as I love you," he choked out, a sob escaping him. "Because I always did love you, no matter whom I sided with or what I said to you. I know that it's... it's too late now, but please, just forgive me for that day. You don't have to forgive _me,_ just forgive what I said. Because no matter what you thought, it was truly just a mistake. I was angry and- I love you, Lily!" he shouted, his voice bursting out as tears began streaming down his face. "I wanted you to know that before you died. But I'm a coward. I couldn't tell you this until it was too late. So please, just know that I love you, and..." He broke off as the tears continued to slide down his pale face. For a few minutes, he didn't speak. Then finally, he pressed a hand to her cheek, and pressed his lips to her forehead.

"No matter what, Lily, I'll always love you." Pulling out his wand, Severus paused, drinking in every detail of her face, trying to forget for just a moment that she was dead. After a moment, a silver doe galloped out of his wand. It nuzzled Lily's face gently, and then galloped into the distance.

"Come back to me someday," Severus whispered after the doe.

She never did.


	3. RemusTonks

For dimitrisgirl18's Big/Lil Sis comp with the prompts candle and grief.

* * *

"Promise me," she says, "that you'll come back in one piece, do you hear me, Remus Lupin?"

And he says _I promise, _shapes it into a grin and presses it to her lips, as if that will soothe the tremble of her nerves, the fearful ache in her chest.

When he leaves, he looks back and nods, and she tries to memorise the shine in his bright eyes.

Teddy begins to cry and she goes to comfort him, hoping he will do the same for her.

* * *

She hears whispers of the battle afterwards.

It was horrific, they say. Bodies strewn like leaves along the ground, children broken as snapped branches across the forest floor.

She imagines Remus, twisted spine and pain etched onto his face, and she screams until her throat is raw and every plate in the house sits like disastrous glitter on the kitchen floor, blinking in the light from the candle on the counter.

She stares at the flame, remembers how she had lit it last night, lazily, uncaringly, and kissed her husband goodbye. She stares now at the stump of wax that has melted down to almost nothing, at the dance of the fire as it flickers, and wonders how it is that something so destructive could outlive her Remus.

She does not stop watching until the hot wax has dried on the counter and the flame has died on the wick, black and crumbling.

She wonders what that feels like, and finds she already knows.

* * *

Her mother comes by wearing that widow's grief that Tonks can feel in her own face, etched into the frown lines by her mouth, pooling in her irises desperately; she knows that no matter how much she changes, they will never go.

"I know it's hard," her mother says, "but we won, Nymphadora. He helped us win."

"But now what?" she asks, and there is no answer except the warmth of her mother's arms and the cool drop of tears as they hit fall into her hair.

* * *

"Promise me," she sobs, "that you'll come back to me. Promise me, promise me, promise me."

But he is not there to promise, not there to kiss her fears away, not there to wrap her in his arms and tell her it'll all be okay. He's not there.

"Promise me," she whimpers, curling into his pillow and pretending it is him, letting his scent calm her shaking hands.

And then Teddy begins to cry and she goes to comfort him, hoping he will do the same for her.

He looks at her with his father's eyes and cries until morning. The sun rises behind her, and she hardly notices.

She knows that neither of them can be comforted. Not now.


	4. RemusSirius

For dimitrigirl18's Big/Lil Sis comp with the prompts RemusSirius and forgotten.

* * *

He is pale.

Pale as the moon that always left him so broken, pale as the cool light that twisted his limbs into knots and threw his body aside to make way for the wolf for so, so long. Too long.

(Not nearly long enough.)

And Sirius' fingers are twisting into Remus', ignoring their stiff lethargy, the sickening coolness of his touch. His heart feels heavy in his chest, sinking like a dead weight, and the word _why_ is tripping from his tongue over and over and over. It is a question that will never be answered.

Remus is bloody and still, so bloody still and still so bloody; his body slumps forward, naked, scratched and battered and broken. Sirius wants to trace the pathways of trauma on his thin limbs, wants to run his fingers across each deep slash and every long-healed scar that litters his torso, his back, his sides, wants to memorise the pattern that Remus hacked into his own skin with the wolf's claws and, sometimes, Sirius knows, his own shaking fingers wrapped around the steel of a blade.

Sirius can tell which it was this time, sees it in the precise slices and slashes down Remus' forearms. He is too bright, jarring red on blank white with silver-scar shine; Sirius cannot look away, no matter how much he wants to.

When James finds him, he has forgotten how to speak, how to tell him what has happened. How to say anything other than _why._

"Sirius, please," James chokes, "Sirius, let go. Please."

But if he lets go, Sirius knows they will take him away, hide him somewhere, throw his body into the dirt and let it nurture the weeds sprouting from beneath a gravestone, and he doesn't want that to happen because this is Remus, and Remus doesn't die.

Remus bleeds.

Remus bleeds and Madam Pomfrey bandages the worst of his wounds and heals the others with a flick of her wand; Remus bruises and Sirius presses tender hands to his skin and promises it will all be okay; Remus scars and they all pretend not to notice, or beg him to stop, or try to imagine how it would feel to wear Remus' skin, to house the wolf, to bend your bones for the moon.

And Sirius remembers telling, remembers whispering to James and Peter in the night about new scars that are too straight, about lines that aren't claw marks or shadows of teeth. He remembers nothing being done. Remembers them telling him to forget it. Remembers no one taking him seriously, remembers being told Remus is a _wolf_, Remus is bound to _hurt himself._

But James is crying as he tries to pull Sirius' hands away from Remus, his fingers growing slick with blood, and Sirius is shouting _why why WHY WHY _over and over and James is echoing _I'm sorry_s and no one is listening to anything but the silence Remus has left behind.

When James finally pulls Sirius free, he hauls him to his feet and wraps him in his arms and holds him until Sirius' knees give way and he is a heap on the floor beside his lover, and he hates hates _hates _the part of him that wishes the blood on his hands was his, that wishes he could stay here, wishes he was dead.

"Sirius, please," James says, but Sirius isn't listening.

And why should he? No one ever listened to him, and now it is far too late.


End file.
